Yeah. Sure. Measles can actually destroy the immune system so that it forgets not only that you have had measles, but everything else you’ve developed an immunity to (it’s called immune amnesia) by having the disease or having a vaccine, and face getting the whole mob again. Or, you could be the 1 or 2 people in 1000 who will die, or the 1 in 1000 who will get encephalitis and live, albeit significantly intellectually and physically disabled. Or you could get subacute sclerosing panencephalitis ten years after you had measles, and that’s almost always fatal.

Makes getting shingles after having chicken pox as a kid seem like a walk in the park, mmm?

The Guardian, The Tyee, BBC, CBC, Reuters and AP, with a dash of utterly unreliable press from abroad.

I remember seeing the coverage at the time, and saying to a colleague that Ukraine was making a huge mistake. He scoffed at the idea a middle-aged woman, even one with degrees in highly relevant fields, could grasp geopolitics. And now I’m an old woman, thinking quietly, ‘X, you were an idiot then, and you are an idiot now.’

Because life is its own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It’s only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose – we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach – who cannot find enough in life to be happy.

Are we allowed to use fully spelled out bad language on Lemmy? Because I have a suggestion for Mr. Trump which involves an athletic approach to a rolling doughnut.